Thunderstorm Wind — St. Louis, Missouri

2023-07-01 · near South Bellefontaine, St. Louis, Missouri

Event narrative

Widespread wind damage across the northern portions of St. Louis County as a line of storms moved through. Numerous large trees, tree limbs, power poles and power lines were blown down. In Jennings, a very large tree was snapped off (possibly due to a lightning strike) and landed on a home, crushing a 5 year old boy in his bedroom. He was rescued and taken to a nearby hospital, but was pronounced dead soon after. The house next door sustained major roof damage from this large tree as well. A large tree branch, approximately two feet in diameter, was blown down onto an unoccupied car just east of Chesterfield. In Kirkwood, a large tree was uprooted and as it fell it damaged the corner of a home. Otherwise, widespread tree damage was reported in St. Ann, Clayton, University City, Creve Coeur, Overland, Florissant, Black Jack and Spanish Lake. Over 100,000 customers (St. Louis County/St. Louis City) were without power due to this storm. It took a little over 4 days to restore power to all of them.

Wider weather episode

Even though an old outflow boundary was across southeast Missouri and the far southern portions of Illinois during the morning hours, the boundary dissipated, allowing 75+ dew points to surge north along the Mississippi River. As skies cleared the atmosphere was able to quickly destabilize. Surface based CAPEs were in excess of 3000 J/kg with 40kts of 0 to 6km bulk shear. This combined with a shortwave trough that moved eastward across the region, produced strong to severe storms. There were numerous reports of damaging winds and some reports of large hail. There were three fatalities due to fallen trees.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.6565, -90.5539)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1125076. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.